


Forgive and Forget

by Cinaed



Category: CSI: Las Vegas
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-15
Updated: 2006-08-15
Packaged: 2017-10-07 14:49:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinaed/pseuds/Cinaed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Forgive and forget," her grandfather says, but Wendy has never quite gotten a grasp on the concept of forgiveness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forgive and Forget

The problem with forgetting, Wendy thinks, is that first you must grasp the concept of forgiveness, and Wendy has always been the sort to hold grudges. 

"Forgive and forget, live and let live," her grandfather had always told her, but stuck on the issue of forgiveness and unable to move past it, Wendy had always just wrapped her arms around his frail, slender frame and murmured, "I’m trying, Ojiisan," into his silver hair. 

Her grandfather had always smoked cigars, and maybe that is why the scent of cigar smoke haunts her every Memorial Day, filling her nostrils and making her want to cough, even if the smell is only in her head. 

She remembers the way smoke wreathed her grandfather’s silvered head when he told his stories, when he’d spoken softly of the three years spent living in an internment camp and how his older brother had been sent to another camp and had died "resisting orders." 

"We didn’t believe it," he would say quietly, and even now Wendy hears his voice as though she’s sitting in his lap, listening to him speak, though the man is ten years dead. "We _never_ believed it. Akio was a dutiful son, and a good man. He was only twenty when he died, you know. They took him from the university and put him in the camp."

"Yes, Ojiisan," she would say, snuggling up against him and gazing up at his old, weathered features, as though the answer to life lay in studying each line on his face. 

"I have forgiven them, you know," he would always say then, dark eyes and slightly accented voice earnest. "And I have forgotten much of that time, because it is not good to cling to dark memories that make me feel sad and vengeful. But I will -- I _must_ remember Akio. I must remember Akio, because he was my brother, and he did not resist orders." 

"I know, Ojiisan. I will not forget him either." 

She has not forgotten her great-uncle. She doubts she ever will, even though the man was many years dead when she was born, just as she has never forgotten the apology that was sent to her grandfather by the United States government. 

Wendy was fourteen at the time, and she remembers the look on her grandfather’s face, and the way he had held the check for $20,000 for hours, just looking at it. She cannot forget it, the way his face had gone still and empty, the spark in those brilliant eyes of his dying, and how old and weary he had looked for months afterwards. 

That $20,000, which the government had given him by way of apology -- "sorry for those three years we stole from you, and for the brother you lost" -- went to Wendy’s college education. Sometimes that fact makes her want to cry or scream, because the idea that she went to college thanks to blood money makes her feel like she’s betrayed Great Uncle Akio, like she’s betrayed every living soul who was in those internment camps. 

Every Memorial Day, the scent of cigar smoke haunts her, and every year, she finds herself buying Punch Vintage (her grandfather’s favorite brand had been Villa de Cuba, but they are illegal now) and taking them to his grave and saying into the silence of the graveyard, "I haven’t forgotten him, or you, Ojiisan." 

Her grandfather had always told her to move past the injustice and look towards the future and not the past. Wendy has always tried to follow his example, but she has never been able to separate the sin from the sinner, and it is impossible for her, in the end, to forgive and forget.   



End file.
